


Invisible

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As always, she wonders how different their lives would be now if they'd only met a little sooner, before they were cracked and broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invisible

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-Season Four. Written for LJ's hc_bingo community, for the prompt "invisibility"
> 
> * * *

Carol catches her reflection in the car window as she strides across the lot, slows down to glance at herself in the tinted glass. Her hair started turning grey when she was only twenty-five, a lost cause before she hit thirty. Eyes a pale, muddied green; nose just a little too upturned to be considered 'perky'. _Plain as dry toast_ , her mother used to say to anyone who would listen. _Lucky she could catch a man at all, my Carol._

She realizes that she's frowning, her shoulders hunched. She draws a breath, forces herself to stand straight and tall. Her hair is striking, her eyes forthright and direct. She is not the woman she once was.

She straightens her shirt before continuing across the lot, raises a hand in greeting to Karen and Tyreese as she passes. The first dry day after a week of rain has brought everyone out into the concrete yard, faces turned eagerly up to the sun. She smiles at a couple of the children, drawing with coloured chalk on the walls; at Zach bent over his old Charger, up to his elbows in grease and sweat, Beth dancing away with a giggle as he stalks teasingly toward her, arms outstretched with the intent to muddy her pale arms.

She shakes her head when Len gestures for her to come join him at the chess board. She is bound for the picnic table. Bound for Daryl, seated atop the scarred planks with his crossbow on his lap and his feet on the seat.

As always, her breath catches a little at the sight of him. His head is bent, hair dangling in his eyes, scanning intently over something on his bow. He glances up, squints through his overgrown bangs at something on the other side of the yard, his expression distracted now. Carol clenches her hands into fists at her sides when she reaches him, quells the urge to brush the hair away from his face. They don't do that. She doesn't do that. 

As always, she wonders how different their lives would be now if they'd only met a little sooner, before they were cracked and broken. 

"Looks serious," she says with a smile as she hops up beside him.

He side-glances her before turning his attention back to his bow, flicks the bowstring experimentally. "Nah," he says. "Just don't want something goin' wrong when I got a walker on my ass."

She's seen the attention he pays to his bow – more, sometimes, than he seems to pay to the people he uses the bow to protect. She cocks her head. "Planning on using it sometime soon?"

Daryl nods, glances across the yard again before turning to her, squinting against the sunlight. "Gonna head out to the old deer blind," he says. "Was seein' tracks last week, before the skies opened up like that. Might be able to nab us a buck, if the weather holds."

"We'll appreciate the fresh meat. I know Hershel and Dr. S have been worried about the lack of protein, especially for the children." She smiles. "But sitting up on that platform all day must be awfully boring."

Daryl frowns, shakes his head. "It ain't. Just quiet." He lifts a hand to gesture toward the kids, their artwork abandoned for a game of hopscotch; his raised arm also takes in a mixed group of people from D and C blocks making their way down to the fences to cull the walkers that consistently gather there. She follows his gaze to where it hesitates on Beth and Zach, Beth's chin propped on her hand as she listens intently to Zach's instructions on carburetors or engine blocks, before he turns his attention back to the crossbow. "Don't get much quiet 'round here."

Carol nods. She knows all about escape. Hers was always romance novels, ridiculous cliché-ridden things in which the damsel in distress flailed about helplessly until some over-muscled cretin swept in to save the day. The thought of the way she sighed over those books makes her cringe. 

But there's no need to hide away now. Not, she hopes, for either of them.

"I could come with you," she suggests, ducking her head to meet his downturned eyes. "Keep you company." 

"Nah," he says. "Gotta check the snares, too. Don't want—"

"Hi Daryl," Beth calls out. "Hey Carol."

If she wasn't looking directly at him, Carol might have missed the way Daryl's shoulders suddenly tense, the way his hands clench and release on the bow. The way he raises only his eyes to take in the girl and her boyfriend, holding hands as they pass the bench. 

And just like that, she knows.

"Hey," Daryl says.

"Going hunting?"

"Yeah," Daryl says. He tucks his hands beneath his armpits, juts his chin in the general direction of the woods. "Deer."

"Be careful," Beth says, her face solemn. She rolls her eyes when Zach tugs at her hand, but lets herself be towed along. "Let me know if you need any help with the deer when you get back," she calls over her shoulder, smiling when the boy slings an arm over her shoulder and tries for a kiss.

Carol raises a hand to shade her eyes, watches Beth's long blonde hair lifting in the breeze, the way her pretty blue eyes sparkle. She raises a brow. "They're a cute couple," she says dryly.

She side-glances Daryl in time to see his face twist briefly. "I gotta go," he says as he hops down from the bench. He scoops up the bow, is striding across the concrete before she can do more than open her mouth.

If there was any doubt, it's gone as she watches him stalk purposefully across the lot, intent on his escape.

Carol allows herself a brief moment to grieve for the end of her stupid dreams, the crush of all the could-have-beens that she's been harbouring in her secret heart. Then she stands, wipes a hand over her face.

Her days of being a damsel in distress are long over. She will make her own way in the world. She is strong and she is more than capable. She doesn't need anyone else.


End file.
